Brockton man sues MBTA over parking fines

BROCKTON – Richard Meyer grew so frustrated with the MBTA’s commuter rail parking payment system that he filed a federal lawsuit.

For more than a decade, the Brockton resident parked at the Campello commuter rail station on his way to work. Meyer, like thousands of other commuters, used what are known as “honor boxes.”

Commuters drop cash into slots corresponding to a numbered parking space. Parking attendants collect the cash and issue tickets for nonpayment. No receipts are provided for commuters.

The result is an unreliable system prone to misuse, said Meyer’s attorney Shennan Kavanagh. Without proof of payment, she said, commuters are subject to coercive collection tactics and a dead-end appeals process.

“Drivers are left in a no-win situation,” Kavanagh said. “(Transportation officials) simply demand the money under threat of towing or immobilizing vehicles or preventing the driver from renewing their vehicle registration.”

Meyer’s complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Boston, claims that his constitutional right to due process was violated by the MBTA and two contractors, LAZ Parking and Complus Data Innovations.

The lawsuit requests that the MBTA and its contractors stop further collections activities and pay attorneys' fees.

It was prompted, in part, by a letter Meyer recently received demanding payment for unpaid parking fines from more than three years ago. The letter did not explain the delay in seeking payment, Kavanagh said, and did not provide a “sufficient” avenue for dispute.

Meyer’s complaint seeks class action status, which allows people with similar claims to join the lawsuit. Kavanagh said Meyer is the only plaintiff so far. She would not say whether her law firm is actively seeking other participants.

“He wants to get relief both for himself and for everyone else in the same situation that he is in,” Kavanagh said.

Kavanagh, a partner at the Boston law firm Klein Kavanagh Costello, LLP, said Meyer did not wish to be interviewed. She declined to disclose his profession or other identifying information. Attempts to reach Meyer at home were unsuccessful.

Representatives for LAZ Parking and Complus Data Innovations did not respond to requests for comment.

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said in an email that the authority “has been working to reduce the number of cash transactions in the parking fee collection system” by offering a Pay by Phone system. An alternative to cash and offering electronic receipts, that system is currently used by 40 percent of people parking in commuter rail lots.

Pesaturo also defended the cash collection system, saying that when the so-called honor box is opened, a photo of the interior cubicles is taken immediately. The collector, using an electronic device, then determines which space numbers have been paid.

The penalty halting vehicle registration for nonpayment was instituted, Pesaturo said, because for years “scofflaws would simply ignore the MBTA’s repeated requests for delinquent payment.”

Rep. Mike Brady, D-Brockton, said the problem should have been fixed already. The MBTA, he said, could have come up with a way to issue receipts to commuters.

“They should have upgraded this system, obviously,” Brady said.

News of the lawsuit prompted local commuters to recount their own problems with commuter rail parking.

They described changing their parking plans because of cash collection headaches, receiving erroneous fines and getting bills for unpaid tickets that never materialized on their windshields.

"I've been fighting a year's span of tickets they gave me worth $150. No warnings. And now, after a year, they're coming after me?" said Ronda Peterson, who would not disclose her age or hometown, Wednesday at the Montello station in Brockton

Deborah McDonald, 48, of Brockton, works as an administrative assistant at Massachusetts General Hospital. She typically parks at the Montello parking lot in Brockton and, once in a while, takes the commuter rail from Braintree.

But McDonald has received fines for unpaid parking in Milton, where she said she has never parked. She also received a collections letter last Christmas demanding nearly $50 in fines and threatening a $200 penalty if she did not pay.

Without a receipt, McDonald said she was forced to pay a fine she didn’t deserve.

“There are days you know that you put your money in the box and you get a ticket on your car anyway,” McDonald said. “Finally someone is doing something.”

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